Fahrenheit Faso

I wake up to an omelette avec fromage from kind Felix whose coffee’s not so great and I’ve woken up too late to dodge the heat but what’s the hurry it’s just another bright beautiful hot day and I think I’ll read and then maybe write after a midday shower and watch the Champions League battle for quarter final places and Arsenal had better beat Roma and wake up to their infinite possibilities and then maybe call the kids and tell them my new arrival date and check up on the situation in the broken country by calling the cousin in Johannesburg. Habit makes me tune into English radio programmes to kick start my day and it's odd listening to the today programme naked overlooking a balcony that's already too hot for the lizards soon after 7 and outside a man is late for something and the dust lies still and suffering from the sun and I play with my breakfast because I'm not really that hungry.

The truth about being alone in a hotel room far away with just your thoughts and steady mutterings in a foreign language along every corridor within earshot is that it lends one to long periods of self-reflection which start off in high spirits but lingering on such thoughts brings ghosts from the past to the fore and ofcourse many names are just a phone call away but who would want to hear from you the gathered devils lining my shoulders whisper in chorus and I turn in panic back to the work in hand and conclude that writing is a lonely pursuit only the very brave and the very disciplined do well and I’m too weak to be in their ranks but push on I do inspired by the city and the films of the month and give words to fake characters which may have come from real people and my brother from Jozi suggested just the other week that we should take a trip to Rio to write. I told him bluntly that while I’ve never been to Rio I doubt it’s a city I could write in because of its legendary distractions and I laugh myself out of the dark mood threatening to spill over my mind because it's good to keep a few hilarious memories in store and out in the pool the swimming coach is holding one of his students with a hand on the tummy and another on the back and launching the young lady into to the deep dark sparkling blue of water and I think he enjoys his job more than he should and I turn on the itunes and work to Macy Gray going : deep in the struggle I have found the beauty of me, God is watching and the devil finally let me be, here in this moment to myself I'm gonna ride with no-one else, there is a conversation I need to have with me - it's just a - moment to myself. yeah yeah yeah.

There are things around our world on which we all have something to say and I thought I’d spend the day exploring Mr Compaore’s capital but that can only be done way after the heat has calmed down so we look to move after four. A couple of days ago Bernard had called to say that he was taking some white people up to his village because they wanted to see some elephants and he’d called that evening to say he’d decided to come back to the city because his guests were asking for too much they were wandering around villages over which he had no jurisdiction and not respecting other people’s space and the final straw was when they were told not to get too close to the elephant and ignored the guides and the elephant charged and they ran back to the car and wept with fear and relief. I get a lot of mileage from Bernard, he’s savvy and funny.

Come the setting of the sun or its descend we head out in one of the city’s many green cabs which pick up commuters by the roadside and it seems to me that the city is huge and expansive and a little dirty with the dust from all the desert to the far north east clinging to everything. My man thinks he should show me the place where foreigners shop and a large market much like any other market full of handy crafts and the artistic efforts of sculptors and silversmiths and cloth merchants sits like a dormitory on some turn off and it’s touching to see the mask makers chiselling away at their artefacts in front of passing customers as if you are in a Thai restaurant somewhere in Jozi and the act of watching your meal being prepared will somehow make it more appealing but these are masks which get lost with lost luggage and it's touching because there is such application of skills for products which will be shunned by the indifference of the tourist.There’s the man using hands and machine to make yet another brass sculptor of an elephant and the damn things are so heavy who’s going to take them away but work they must because poverty grips this land like so much of our Africa and I play the tourist and flirt with the female silversmith and try on a ring on my little finger because that’s how I used to measure the size for little hands and there are great designs in the jewellery featuring the ubiquitous cowry shell which is now a favourite symbol for my baby girl. I complain about the price and she says that is the price for this commodity. Do I know that some people will mix their silver to make it seem heavier and shinier and that’s the kind of silver that makes ears swell and irritates the skin and this is pure and you pay for the purity monsieur I reckon it must be like some cultures valuing virginity and what's the point of that the inexperienced have no idea about anything and I hate myself for getting smutty and and ask are you sure? Bernard takes over and bargains on my behalf and the lady is not for dropping her price and she weighs the silver and we must agree that just because this is a market does not mean things come free.

A gorgeous silver and amber necklace would look good around my mother’s neck in her Sunday church service best and I ask my friend Bernard to text the silversmith and ask her how much that would be and my man looks at me with deep regret and I say what’s wrong and he says he’s very sorry truly sorry to tell me that he cannot text because he never went to school and cannot read or write and I apologise for being so presumptuous and he says no it’s ok and I say don’t you want to learn and he says ofcourse but it wasn’t cheap when he was a child and it’s not cheap now and he’s in his mid-20’s. So what's Compaore’s legacy to these poor but proud people? That won’t be easy to gauge.


In the day time and the evening time the streets are dotted with football fans. Wherever you are in the world, the grip of the beautiful game is there and for sure the replica shirts may be cloned in China for resale in Africa, but they are there the Barcelona supporters and ofcourse the Arsenal supporters and the names on the back of the shirts reveal a strong pro-African leaning with Eboue Samuel Eto Adebayor Essien and the ever present Drogba all over people’s backs and then there are others too like the brilliant Fabregas taking a turn on his bicycle by the traffic lights and we reckon it will be a very good game this second leg against Roma and Bernard says yes he’ll watch the match with me but he supports Marseilles and ofcourse he does. We dine together from the hotel's predictable menu and there is a massive flat screen out by the pool and ofcourse it's not showing Arsenal there's Barcelona there's the Man U game over at Inter Milan and a gorgeous young woman sits in our eyeline until her old man moves her and across the way a fit young man sits with an old woman and Bernard looks up from his beer and says with his customary earnestness Oh my broder. The old French men com here and fok our sisters, the old French women com here and fok our brothers. Who is left for us to fok? We switch between games and the excellent phone comms in these parts have my friends in London texting to say Arsenal went down 1 nil after ten minutes and we are holding on for dear life. Come the end of extra time my man from the Grove calls and gives a running commentary on the penalty shoot out and we celebrate when Roma misses a vital kick and sends Arsenal through to the quarter finals and the fickle commentators who seconds before had been predicting the gunners demise now spout shit about how this young team has come of age. Bernard goes home, I go and read.



I take a walk through the city after the match because tossing and turning and wriggling in my sleep gets me exhausted and why wait for sleep when you can let sleep come to you and the streets in the dark are full of the same vendors now amassed by the sidewalks free of traffic and the immediate impression is that selling eggs after midnight must be the way to go to school and the tourists are out too hanging around bars with names like Showbizz and Jimmy's and they're the magnet for the vendors and young men push pirated dvd's into my hands and some contain as many as 38 action films on one dvd and there are loads of films dedicated to the last days of one Thomas Sankara and there ofcourse is the evidence that true murderers do not fear the murdered even if they pop up now and again in hero worshipping films because the dead are very dead.I wonder too how much Hollywood Nollywood and Bollywood are losing from pirated videos because as usual the dark continent is unsurveyed and the pirated copies are not that bad and I should grow a moral gene that protests at this obvious theft of artistic enterprise but fuck that you get rid of the cotton subsidies and the IMF conditions and then maybe kids around here will have enough to eat and to learn how to read and if you want your films to be seen then hire a pirate video merchant because cinemas are going bust and the average price of a movie ticket once you've added the cost of getting it there could feed a family for a week and the arts have to be cheap or stolen.In the few days of wandering the city on my own I've come across several kids who've made the journey into Francophone Faso from Anglophone Ghana and Nigeria and Liberia and they slip easily back into their second language and take it upon themselves to be my protectors which basically means I must buy porn off them instead of these french boys who are too lazy to work and the artificial divisions make me laugh because they are all in the same boat and here and there on the darkened streets late at night grown men sleep on benches in the heat and even the odd prostitute with polio will approach you and tout her broken wares.But the city remains indifferent to the struggling majority the dignified man with his drums for sale the gentleman carrying reams upon reams of waxed cloth on his shoulders all of them make eye contact with you and if your eye lingers they come over and begin at once to discuss a price for the goods you've glanced at and all this happening by the outdoor tables where I'm served a coffee or a jack sitting with the Lebanese businessmen the Syrian adventurers and the French of either sex downing their beers and across the way is the Royal Air Morocco offices and up the road is a bank where a security guard has fallen asleep with his rifle across his thighs and he'd be a corpse in Johannesburg for sure and everything about this city street is not for the locals not even the Casino Lydia across the way flashing its lights and its promise of instant riches if you are brave enough to gamble or dumb enough to think good luck is on a rotation and will come your way because you threw away the rent. Still sleep won't come when I head back to my room and watch my friend's film Bamako playing on Malian television beamed to me by some satellite station and reckon the old man is the best thing in it and I step out again in the late early morning way before the dawn and the security guards are saying you cannot sleep mon patron and they laugh at me and I sit down on their plastic chairs and share a cigarette and watch the whores at the bar on the corner of the street. More whores enter my hotel on the arms of some French tourists who all look like they've walked out of a Truffault film with their specs and intellectual air and the girls have to leave their ID's at the reception and I ask why because the government thinks they may be thieves and will steal from the country's visitors and I find another reason to detest Le beau Blaize the pretender with his schizophrenic city with its gleaming banks and ass-drawn rubbish collectors and dust and pain.

I venture across to the whores' bar at the corner of the street because if truth be told I've always liked whores - their fragility their hardness their humanity their histories. And if I were to say they are an infinite source of information to the artist, that I do not believe in their pleasures let alone paying for them, but that I do believe in conversation you'd probably say I was protesting too much. It's 3.30 in the morning and I order a beer and tell the security guard to sit by me and make sure none of the ladies of the night impose themselves on our personal space and he dismisses several away and this, this poor city whose women are relying on the largesse of strangers is Compaore's legacy. There are no jobs there are no free schools, the country has many international friends and the European Union gives and gives while The French Cultural Centre supports the filmmakers it believes in.Every foreigner has the freedom of the city the citizens are under suspicion every cab driver carries the American flag there are French acrobats performing at the 40th anniversary of the African Film Festival - the man has just pimped out his country to the highest bidder and these beautiful young women, catwalk possibilities in a Parisian life everyone of them, just want to get away. There is a woman next to me watching my strained french peppered with too much English who's more hippo walk than catwalk model. O. You speak English. My brother. I am from Delta State Nigeria where you from. I tell her. Oh my condolences oh over the death of your Prime Minister's wife, I saw it on the tv. I know you want to be alone so just buy me and ma fren a beer. I do, and before the hour's through Jessica the thin friend has got rid of my security guard and I learn all about a life spend on the move, from Jos Nigeria to Ouagadougu in search of money and riches. Don't you miss your family? I do but I send them money every month. And how long did it take you to learn French? Five months, you learn a language quick when you are being insulted they call me imbecille and many names. Boyfriend? She laughs. Yes, he's Nigerian like me because I try these local men and they are lost they just want to be French we Nigerians we want to be more.

And into the dawn we talk as the corner bar gets full and I meet Francine and Lisa and Gloire and Ann-Marie and the brothers from Nigeria roll up in their 4x4's having crossed the jungle and a desert to be here to make some transaction and a biker turns up to get his girl. The lady says the sun is coming up now do I really want to go to my room alone to leave Ouagadougou without sampling the women and I say yes that's what I want and she says what about me, what if I need to taste you? And this fierce intelligence wrapped up in her night job will ofcourse get her very far with another type of man and I brandish my ring and say the other half would not find that pleasing and she says how would she know and I say I would know and she tries the same old tired arguments of the adulterously adept. I leave Jessica enough for another beer and laugh my way across the street up the stairs and to sleep because there's tragic comedy all around me.